Comments on: I didn't wake up angry about my six-hour per week job.https://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/
History and sexual politics, 1492 to the presentWed, 23 Aug 2017 02:59:08 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Anonymoosehttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17413
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:01:19 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17413Is it just me, or did the rhetoric/bitching about professor’s salaries being ridiculous and the job a cakewalk start about the same time women began being hired for tenure-track positions? if it was still a boys’ club, would the professoriate have retained its mystique, and its justification of salary?

I think we see nonsense like this precisely because more and more women are tenured, and hired onto the tenure track. When the doors open to women, it seems that the profession then invites scrutiny and criticism missing when its men only. When women enter professions that were previously a male domain, salaries drop, privileges dry up, and the profession”s esteem drops.

]]>By: Perpetuahttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17410
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:38:59 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17410Ahh, now I understand. At a Thanksgiving dinner not long ago, a relative launched into a tirade against professors who make $100 K (in front of me and my partner – together we make that – and OF COURSE said relative makes over $200) and I was so stupefied I didn’t know how to respond. Since I work at a public institution, I know exactly how much all my colleagues make (this is a matter of public record at state schools), and the only folks who make 100k or over have been in the business over 30 years and are *very* distinguished scholars. It’s funny how conservative types love these arguments against universities – aren’t they the guys who believe in the free market? Shouldn’t we then let the *market* decide what the value of a professor’s labor is?

But as to the question of service – it’s interesting because on one hand we have the fact that service is totally unrewarded and uncompensated, feminized as Historiann rightly says. Try getting a promotion to associate professor on the strength of your SERVICE RECORD! Ha ha ha ha. Even the provost would deny your case. I say “even” here because the university administration itself devalues service, while simultaneously expecting faculty to engage in more and more of it. My theory is because all university administrators seem to subscribe to the same views put forward by the authors of that atrocious book – ie that faculty don’t really WORK, we aren’t *doing* anything unless every second of our time is accounted for. And while research is the #1 road to success at the majority of our universities, these same universities don’t seem to believe that research is real work. Or rather they seem to think that this chunk of our job is something we should do *on our own time*, whereas the 50 hr work week should be full of teaching and service responsibilities. They seem to think that they don’t *benefit* from our research. And it’s true there isn’t the more obvious correlation between effort and reward as one finds in teaching (each seat filled = $$) or service (running the university for administrators for free). I don’t mind service work generally, but I am more and more troubled by the trend I see among administrators that research *doesn’t count* somehow – unless of course we’re talking about denying someone tenure or a full professorship, then everyone’s shrieking about publications. It’s a weird tangle.

]]>By: Tomhttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17408
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:00:28 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17408Lance’s comment says it all: “I know that compensation isn’t fairly distributed.” As fair-minded and progressive as many faculty members no doubt think they are, the reality is that most of us are all too willing to not rock the boat in favor of a fair distribution of compensation.

Worrying about whether the lack of fair compensation is based in service, teaching, or research is not nearly as important.

]]>By: Lancehttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17406
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:05:54 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17406Look, I direct a program and get worked like a dog, but I’m reasonably well compensated. My job is to eat as much service as I can, and to equitably distribute the rest, protecting research for others (and myself), time away, teaching preferences, family schedules, making sure that students graduate on time (i.e., that the necessary classes are taught often enough), and that faculty have a chance to finish books and articles. This isn’t trivial labor. It is important.

But the same is just not true for everyone, not even at my own institution. I know a half dozen other administrators – all of them women, most of them women of color – stuck, for different reasons, at a lower rank and a lesser wage. Their service is just as important – and perhaps moreso, since they administer programs that disproportionately enroll students of color.

I’m having a very hard time here, because I know exactly how important service (sometimes) is – and I know that compensation isn’t fairly distributed. I see the justice of Historiann’s rant. Maybe this is a big fucking problem precisely *because* it can’t be so easily resolved.

Do we want these people – my underpaid colleagues – to say no to service? I don’t know. Isn’t it better that they serve, and better that we lobby for their appropriate compensation, than that they give up the job?

]]>By: Historiannhttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17405
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:20:51 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17405I see what you’re saying, although I don’t agree with you, koshem Bos. Even if service is invented by those who have nothing else to do, service on the committees and initiatives they invent is required of other faculty members, so what to do about them? (Or rather, us?)

Service is the responsibility of self-government. The question for all self-governing bodies is, how much government do we really need?

]]>By: koshem Boshttps://historiann.com/2010/08/13/i-didnt-wake-up-angry-about-my-six-hour-per-week-job/comment-page-1/#comment-17404
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:09:54 +0000http://www.historiann.com/?p=12138#comment-17404Service is only partially useful. My experience is that service, in many cases, is instigated and run people that have nothing better to do. It involves talking forever with very little action. Furthermore, university level service is usually in a form of an advisory committee that is eventually ignored by the big dogs. Naturally, I wouldn’t give credit for service or the faculty politicians that are typically involved with it.